Live Case-Electric Vehicles in North America Management accounting is grounded in two disciplines: psychology and economics. This is often evident within an organization - examples are a company's reward structure, and the optimal level of training. It can also be evident on a more macro or global scale. A good example is the push toward electric vehicles, or EVs. Many say we must replace all internal combustion cars that use fossil fuels, with electric vehicles, and do it within the next 10-15 years. The economics (plus other realities) indicate that it's much more complex than that. The group challenge: Determine the first year, realistically, that 25% of the vehicles on the roads of North America (narrowly defined as Canada and

Live Case-Electric Vehicles in North America Management accounting is grounded in two disciplines: psychology and economics. This is often evident within an organization - examples are a company's reward structure, and the optimal level of training. It can also be evident on a more macro or global scale. A good example is the push toward electric vehicles, or EVs. Many say we must replace all internal combustion cars that use fossil fuels, with electric vehicles, and do it within the next 10-15 years. The economics (plus other realities) indicate that it's much more complex than that. The group challenge: 1. Determine the first year, realistically, that 25% of the vehicles on the roads of North America (narrowly defined as Canada and the US for this case) could be electric vehicles (EVs). What about 50% ? Briefly explain your answer in the response. 2. What are some of the major qualitative factors that society will need to consider l ? In taking on this challenge, please remember a couple of important things: - The best business professionals (management accountants or not) are those that can deal with ambiguity and incomplete information; they lay out the information they have, and make reasonable assumptions to fill in the gaps, to answer the question to the best of their ability with what they've been provided. - For questions like this, there are no correct answers, only better and worse answers. The better answers employ critical thinking, heuristics and good assumption-making to derive a plausible and defensible response. - You should make and document as many reasonable assumptions as is appropriate. For example, it is reasonable to round the number of cars on American roads at 290 million in 2022. Canada can be estimated at 10% of the US (then rounded), so 30 million Canadian cars on the road. This is 320 million total. This type of assuming and rounding is a way to approach a 'rough cut' answer without getting too wrapped up in reams of unnecessary detail - this is the type of question you can spend 20 minutes on, or 20 hours. Don't spend more than an hour on this question. Get in touch with me if you feel stuck. Marks are awarded for effort and critical thinking, not the answer derived